Current interactive voice response (IVR) systems only allow customers to interact with a company's database using a telephone keypad or by speech recognition. Such IVR systems require a customer to listen to and remember instructions or options presented by the IVR system. The instructions may be complicated, or there may be many options. An embodiment of the present invention enhances an IVR system by composing visual representations of states of the IVR system to display to the customer and enabling the customer to interact with the IVR via the visual representations. The use of the visual representations enables a user to interact with the IVR in a simplified and more expedient manner in part because a linear set of options is presented in a randomly-accessible list or tree structure format.